What Could Have Been
by mgsmurf
Summary: What if what should have been Ryan and Theresa's new family becomes only Ryan's toughest moment of grief to overcome? (2 of 2)
1. Default Chapter

Title: What Could Have Been (1/2)  
Author: smurf Category: Angst Rating: R (for drug use)  
Summary: What if what should have been Ryan and Theresa's new family becomes only Ryan's toughest moment of grief to overcome?  
Warnings: This is very sad; if that'll bother you, please don't read further Author's Notes: This is basically an AU, as they'd never go here in the show, however, I thought the idea was cool and that I'd write it up and share it anyway.  
  
The phone rang again, and Sandy reached out to answer it. His eyes fell on the neon green 4:13 from the nightstand clock, the only light in the darkened room.  
  
"Sandy?" On the other end of the phone, Ryan sounded so uncertain and young it sent Sandy bolting up in bed.  
  
"What's wrong?"  
  
"I...." Ryan seemed unable to do more than mumble.  
  
While Sandy rubbed the last of his sleep from his eyes, Kirsten sat up, worry on her face. 'Ryan,' he worded to her. He watched her give a little sigh as she realized it wasn't Seth.  
  
"Are you alright?" Sandy asked.  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Theresa?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"What is it?" Kirsten whispered.  
  
Sandy shook his head, opened his mouth to ask his first question again, and was interrupted by Ryan--"Kyle's dead."  
  
"Kyle?" Sandy had only meet Ryan's infant son once. Had there been doubt of his parentage before birth, none existed after. He had fine blonde hair, plus he already possessed his father's strong, defiant features.  
  
The shock on Kirsten's face must have mirrored his own. That sigh before had been relief that is wasn't Seth, their own son, in harm. It wasn't their grandson dead, but in many ways it still was.  
  
"How?" Sandy asked as he tried to calculate how old the baby could have been. Not yet a month, right? He'd been born when, right before Christmas, a little on the early side?  
  
"I wouldn't have called, it's just...I don't think...I didn't...."  
  
"Ryan, you need to--"  
  
"We put him to bed early, like always. We thought he'd just started to get the sleeping at night thing, but when we checked he wasn't breathing. Called 911. They came, but it was...they said there hadn't been anything to do." Ryan rambled on, voice soft. It made Sandy feel as though a dam inside Ryan had broken, and perhaps not for the best. "It was probably SIDS, they think; he's a boy, was early, with a low birth rate. Guess it's not all that uncommon."  
  
'SIDS' Sandy worded to Kirsten, pale white beside him. Her brow furrowed. 'Sudden Infant--,' he continued. She nodded knowing the rest, and shook her head as her eyes teared up.  
  
"Ryan...." Sandy tried to say he was sorry, tried to say he could understand. He knew though that words would be just that, and the truth was he could only imagine what Ryan must be going through.  
  
"They let us hold him for a while after; said it would help. Theresa...." Ryan's voice choked up. "I had to take him away; she didn't want to give him up. He was...."  
  
'Cold, dead', Sandy finished in his mind. "Anything, Ryan. Anything you, or Theresa, need."  
  
Only silence echoed back. He could hear Ryan's ragged breath over the quiet sounds of the city: a dog barked, a car drove past, crickets chirped. Sandy could almost see Ryan sitting on a back porch. He stared at nothing, face empty, nothing but a white tank and pants thrown on in a hurry hours ago on.  
  
"They have to do tests," Ryan said, startling Sandy. "To make sure, it was SIDS."  
  
"Of course," Sandy replied. "It would be standard."  
  
"Someone has to pick him up, to...." Sandy heard Ryan swallow, and wished all this pain could be his instead. "Talk to a funeral home...arrange things."  
  
"It'll be done," Sandy answered before he realized what all he'd just offered.  
  
"I can pay you back."  
  
Sandy shook his head. Even now, it came back to not wanting to take their full help. "Don't worry about it."  
  
"They gave me a number, to call."  
  
"Yeah, I'll...let me get some paper." Sandy reached for the nightstand, only to be handed paper and a pen by Kirsten. "Okay." He wrote down the offered number, trying to not think about arranging the funeral for a baby who had barely started life.  
  
"Why don't we come down there," Sandy said. Kirsten firmly nodded her head, made to get off the bed.  
  
"I'm fine. Theresa's out, valium, or something."  
  
"What about you?" Sandy watched Kirsten grabbing clothes. "We should be there."  
  
"No. I...."  
  
'--need to be alone', Sandy knew were the unspoken words. He could imagine Ryan earlier, knowing they needed to call for help, greeting the EMs at the door, putting a robe around Theresa to make her presentable. Ryan would be strong because it was asked of him, and to do that he needed time alone to deal with all this as best he could. Something inside Sandy broke knowing that when Ryan needed them most other's neglecting him in the past didn't allow him to reach out to them.  
  
"Okay," Sandy said. He held up his palm and shook his head to stop Kirsten from dressing. Her face fell knowing why, and she wrapped a robe around herself instead. Sandy wished he could take Ryan into his embrace, tell him lies that it would be fine. "If you need anything, son, any-thing."  
  
"I know," Ryan whispered back, meaning it.  
  
"I'll call you tomorrow."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
Sandy didn't know what else to say. Then he realized what the choking sound on the other end of the line meant: Ryan was crying. The image of tears following down that hard face brought tears to his own. He wanted to say that they were there for him and that they loved him, but no words came.  
  
"I should go," Ryan said.  
  
"Yes. Anything, Ryan."  
  
He could see Ryan nodding his head as he hung up. 


	2. Part 2

Title: What Could Have Been Author: smurf Category: Angst Rating: R (for drug use)  
Summary: What if what should have been Ryan and Theresa's new family becomes only Ryan's toughest moment of grief to overcome?  
Warnings: This is very sad; if that'll bother you, please don't read further Author's Notes: Lots of dialogue here, but I've been feeling in the dialogue writing mood lately, so....  
  
(Five months later)  
  
"Ryan?" Sandy walked toward the figure lying in the lounger by the pool, knowing already there was no one else it could be. Summer was well on it's way again, although it was hard to tell with California weather.  
  
Ryan didn't answer, didn't ever turn to him as Sandy sat down in the lounger beside him. Broken and tore amply described Ryan. Even in the low light of night, Sandy could see the bruises on his face, the busted lip, the broken nose, the scabbed knuckles and most importantly the immobilizer covering most of his left leg.  
  
Sandy watched Ryan take a puff of what he took to be a cigarette before he got a better look. A parental retort came bubbling up in his chest, and he was about to give Ryan some good words over the possession of illegal drugs, when Ryan turned to him and held out the joint. Sandy could smell the sweet scent of marijuana, and much as he'd like to deny it to Seth, knew what the gesture meant. Ryan blinked, his face empty. With more confidence than he felt, Sandy reached out and took the offered joint, giving it a puff himself while he leaned back in the lounger.  
  
His grief over Kyle was something Ryan had to work through himself. Both Sandy and Kirsten had forced themselves to realize this months ago. When Ryan had finally confessed it all to him--dealing drugs for money to help out Theresa's family in a financial bind over her not working and her mother being sick--Sandy had shown all the proper anger. He'd ranted on about how near a ride to a long prison stay Ryan was, asked what he could have been thinking.  
  
From his hospital bed, that hollow look in Ryan's eyes had just stared up at him. Sandy should have known that Ryan had known exactly what he had done and risked, and he hadn't cared. "If you want me to get rid of it," Ryan said.  
  
Sandy took another puff. It was good stuff, if he remembered things correctly. "If you get caught with it...." he said, passing the joint back. Even possession would be enough to get Ryan time.  
  
'Marijuana and pills was all it had been', Ryan had explained in that hospital room. But he was out now, they'd made a bargain with him: his silence and their money back for him taking one royal beating. Then Sandy had caught the scared look in Ryan's eyes. He worried Sandy would leave him as everyone else had, especially now that he knew the truth. Sandy looked at Ryan sitting firm backed from his broken ribs, and looking like the beating might just have been the worst he'd ever gotten, and his temper evaporated. How could he have turned away?  
  
"It's over between us, me and Theresa," Ryan said. His voice sounded as lifeless as his face looked. "I remind her of Kyle, and she'd rather deny it ever happened."  
  
"I'm sorry." Part of him was pained for Theresa and her own mental health. It still amazed him what should have brought joy to them both had ripped Ryan and Theresa apart.  
  
"I just never realized what a friend she was." Ryan passed back the joint.  
  
Sandy nodded. It was odd how lovers tended to end up that way. "I know." He noticed a little teddy bear sitting on Ryan's lap. Sandy knew it must have been Kyle's. He'd seen the baby blanket and the booties made to look like running shoes in Ryan's room. At least Ryan was trying in his own way to face and deal with his son's death.  
  
In silence, they continued to pass the joint. The drug began to tickle his brain, and make his body tingle. Sandy wondered how he'd explain his late night munchies away to Kirsten later.  
  
"We would have screwed it up," Ryan finally said. "I proved that, didn't I?"  
  
"No." Sandy shook his head. He didn't understand how Ryan couldn't see he possessed something most others in Chino didn't.  
  
Ryan turned and set his gaze firmly on Sandy. "I did. I would have."  
  
Sandy again shook his head. "In hard times you lost your way."  
  
"I turned back to what I knew."  
  
"Everyone does," Sandy replied. "What makes you better is that you reversed things, even if times are still bad."  
  
"It'll never get better, will it?" With Ryan's face as empty as it had grown, all Sandy could see was honesty.  
  
"It will." Sandy sure hoped his words would be true. "It will never fully be gone." He could see that, Ryan getting himself back on his feet, falling in love, having another family, and through it all his memory of Kyle would be there. It seemed a tough burden to place on a kid who already had too many.  
  
Ryan nodded, looked up at the sky, and took a long draw on the joint. "I don't tend to fall in love."  
  
"Love involves a great deal of trust." Sandy knew it was something Ryan lacked, with good reason.  
  
"I just didn't know how much I'd love him. How...."  
  
"--Pure, strong and unconditional it would be?"  
  
Ryan nodded, his eyes holding a flickering of life as they stared at Sandy.  
  
"I don't think anyone ever does," Sandy said.  
  
"Somewhere along the way it must get messed up."  
  
Sandy knew what Ryan was getting at. How else could his parents have abandoned him? Funny how being a parent always brought you back full circle to having them.  
  
Ryan passed Sandy the joint. "I understand my dad. He didn't want to pull us down with him."  
  
"Sometimes it takes a strong love to give up what you know you can't properly care for." Sandy hoped that would explain away what Ryan's mother had done, but from Ryan's fallen face knew it hadn't.  
  
"I've tried to think about what it must feel like for you," Sandy said to change the subject. "As a parent, it's something you think about, something you worry about, something you wouldn't fully know about unless you go through it." He looked out across the dark ocean. "But if, heaven forbid, I lost Seth it wouldn't be the same. I couldn't imagine life without him, and all the things he wouldn't have experienced. But in the end, I'd have the years we shared. I know him as a person, as a man even."  
  
Sandy turned to see Ryan looking at him. "To lose a child so young," he continued, "before you really got to know him, before you shared all those experiences, it's a very different thing. You've been denied more than I ever could."  
  
"I worry sometimes no one will remember him." Ryan's voice cracked and a shaky hand held the joint as he took a big draw.  
  
"You'll remember him. That's enough."  
  
"Is it?" Tears were forming in Ryan's eyes, but he didn't look away.  
  
"Kyle existed, he was loved, and he always will be remembered. That's all that can be asked."  
  
Ryan turned away, leaned his head back into the cushion. "It just hurts."  
  
"If I could take your pain for you." Sandy saw the corner of Ryan's mouth twitch. Knew that expression of 'please don't help me' mixed with a shy, 'thanks for helping' was on his face.  
  
"Not that it helps now," Sandy said, "but you're young, you'll have other children. I can't promise you'll ever look in their eyes and not wonder about Kyle--what he would look like at that age, who he would have been? But it's possible that through watching them grow, and sharing their lives, you'll gain a little of Kyle back."  
  
"So now I just need to deal and move on."  
  
Sandy nodded.  
  
"Need to go find that girl and get to making those babies." Ryan gave a sly smirk showing he was joking.  
  
Sandy had to smile back. "You're going to be okay."  
  
Ryan didn't say a word, but a light shown in his eyes that Sandy hadn't seen in months.  
  
Sandy nodded his head. "I always knew you would." He rose, feeling the conversation was over. Sandy thought it was odd how their father and son talks never really felt like that's what they were. It always felt more like mentorship or even friendship.  
  
"Sandy? About the weed, I'll dump it in the morning." Ryan finished off the joint and snuffed it out.  
  
"Good. I wouldn't want...."  
  
"Yeah." Ryan nodded and looked like he wanted to say more.  
  
Just that look told Sandy how much their caring meant to Ryan, and he'd learn it had to be enough. He reached out and patted Ryan's shoulder. "Get some sleep." Tomorrow Ryan had a life to rebuild, again, and perhaps this time it would be for the last time.  
  
end 


End file.
